the girly who shall end all girls

dirtbag fedex stopped by at noon yesterday and claimed that they couldn't deliver the package. no, even if somehow they didn't have a passcode (and all the services do) they couldn't be arsed to ring the call box. don't pretend you thought we weren't home, we're all fucking home.

best part? this service doesn't deliver weekends so I was never getting it on the promised Saturday delivery date.

i've completed watching Picard, examined the offerings of CBS All-Access, and cancelled my trial subscription (which apparently i get continued access to for a month just in case i change my mind). in the US, this service is the legal way to watch Picard and the rest of Star Trek and for me it has nothing else to offer. okay, i might watch some of the new Twilight Zone because i appreciate Jordan Peele. but the rest of the content consists of approximately 100 tv shows and a handful of old movies. most of the tv shows are things that were popular when i was a child. but i guess that's the CBS audience? it's what nursing homes watch when they don't watch Hallmark movies. (true story: i asked one of my father's carers if everyone she saw that night was watching Hallmark Christmas movies and she said it was either that or Blue Bloods.)

but i do recommend Picard. it's not perfectly even; there's one episode where i thought the old man was out of character and there's some stuff in the finale that doesn't quite hang together. but the times when they say the thing are generally earned and impactful; i enjoyed how they worked old friends into the story, and the new characters are growing on me (the best ones aren't in enough episodes, i hope that's rectified in season 2). anyhoo, USians can use code GIFT for a free month of CBS All-Access to legally binge it. i also recommend the "Short Trek" with Spock and Number One.

my other recommendation is Beforeigners, an HBO Nordic show about life in a modern Oslo where people from the past have mysteriously appeared. part of it is a story about Norway integrating a massive influx of refugees. the rest of it is a police procedural featuring Oslo's first Viking cop (a former shieldmaiden) and her flawed but good-hearted partner. i watched three episodes in a row and am stopping now to write this, get a bath, and sleep.

youtube vid (pleasant, includes fruit pie): why pi is (mostly) wrong (or alternately, a text reference)

tl;dr is that we might have an easier time teaching this stuff if we based circle math on radius instead of diameter.

which led to a conversation at lunch about when humans codified pi (pretty damn early) and why diameter? i posited that using diameter comes from the ease of drawing/visualizing it freehand, a radius wants a compass.

but this tau discussion reminds me of something that i had a hard time swallowing as a kid studying math: "wait, this is all arbitrary?"